THE
WASHINGTON POST late
Friday night published an
explosive story that,
in many ways, is classic American journalism of the worst sort: The
key claims are based exclusively on the unverified assertions of
anonymous officials, who in turn are disseminating their own claims
about what the CIA purportedly believes, all based on evidence that
remains completely secret.

These
unnamed sources told the Post that “the CIA has concluded in a
secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help
Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine
confidence in the U.S. electoral system.” The anonymous officials
also claim that “intelligence agencies have identified individuals
with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks
with thousands of hacked emails” from both the DNC and John
Podesta’s email account. Critically, none of the actual
evidence for these claims is disclosed; indeed, the CIA’s “secret
assessment” itself remains concealed.

A
second leak from last night, this
one given to the New York Times,
cites other anonymous officials as asserting that “the
Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer
systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but
did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican
networks.” But that NYT story says that “it is also far from
clear that Russia’s original intent was to support Mr. Trump, and
many intelligence officials — and former officials in Mrs.
Clinton’s campaign — believe that the primary motive of the
Russians was to simply disrupt the campaign and undercut confidence
in the integrity of the vote.”

Deep
down in its article, the Post notes — rather critically — that
“there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about
the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain
unanswered.” Most importantly, the Post adds that
“intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing
officials in the Kremlin ‘directing’ the identified individuals
to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks.” But the purpose of
both anonymous leaks is to finger the Russian government for these
hacks, acting with the motive to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Needless
to say, Democrats — still eager to make sense of their election
loss and to find causes for it other than themselves — immediately
declared these anonymous claims about what the CIA believes to be
true, and, with a somewhat sweet, religious-type faith, treated
these anonymous assertions as proof of
what they wanted to believe all along: that Vladimir Putin was
rooting for Donald Trump to win and Hillary Clinton to lose and used
nefarious means to ensure that outcome. That Democrats are now
venerating unverified, anonymous CIA leaks as sacred is par for the
course for them this year, but it’s also a good indication of how
confused and lost U.S. political culture has become in the wake of
Trump’s victory.

Given
the obvious significance of this story — it is certain to shape how
people understand the 2016 election and probably foreign policy
debates for months if not years to come — it is critical to keep in
mind some basic facts about what is known and, more importantly, what
is not known:

(1) Nobody
has ever opposed investigations to determine if Russia hacked these
emails, nor has anyone ever denied the possibility that Russia did
that. The source of contention has been quite simple: No accusations
should be accepted until there is actual convincing evidence to
substantiate those accusations.

There
is still no such evidence for any of these claims. What we have
instead are assertions, disseminated by anonymous people,
completely unaccompanied by any evidence, let alone proof. As a
result, none of the purported evidence — still — can be
publicly seen, reviewed, or discussed. Anonymous claims leaked
to newspapers about what the CIA believes do not constitute proof,
and certainly do not constitute reliable evidence that
substitutes for actual evidence that can be reviewed. Have we really
not learned this lesson yet?

(2)
The reasons no rational person should blindly believe anonymous
claims of this sort — even if it is pleasing to believe such claims
— should be obvious by now.

Many
of those incidents demonstrate, as hurtful as it is to accept,
that these agencies even lie when there’s a Democrat overseeing the
executive branch. Even in those cases when they are not
deliberately lying, they are often gravely mistaken. Intelligence is
not a science, and attributing hacks to specific sources is a
particularly difficult task, almost
impossible to carry out with precision and certainty.

Beyond
that, what makes claims from anonymous sources so especially dubious
is that their motives cannot be assessed. Who are the people
summarizing these claims to the Washington Post? What motives do they
have for skewing the assertions one way or the other? Who are the
people inside the intelligence community who fully ratify these
assertions and who are the ones who dissent? It’s impossible to
answer any of these questions because everyone is masked by the
shield of anonymity, which is why reports of this sort demand high
levels of skepticism, not blind belief.

Most
important of all, the more serious the claim is — and accusing a
nuclear-armed power of directly and deliberately interfering in the
U.S. election in order to help the winning candidate is about as
serious as a claim can get —the
more important it
is to demand evidence before believing it. Wars have started over far
less serious claims than this one. People like Lindsey Graham are
already beating
their chest,
demanding that the U.S. do everything in its power to punish Russia
and “Putin personally.”

Nobody
should need an explainer about why it’s dangerous in the extreme to
accept such inflammatory accusations on faith or, worse, based on the
anonymous assurances of intelligence officials, in lieu of seeing the
actual evidence.

(3) An
important part of this story, quite clearly, is inter-agency feuding
between, at the very least, the CIA and the FBI.

Recall
that the top echelon of the CIA was firmly behind Clinton and
vehemently against Trump, while at least some powerful factions
within the FBI had the opposite position.

Former
acting CIA Director Michael Morell not only endorsed
Clinton in the New York Times but
claimed that “Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation.” George W. Bush’s CIA and NSA
director, Gen. Michael Hayden, pronounced
Trump a
“clear and present danger” to U.S. national security and then,
less than a week before the election, went
to the Washington Post to warn that
“Donald Trump really does sound a lot like Vladimir Putin” and
said Trump is “the useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow,
secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily
accepted and exploited.”

Meanwhile,
key factions in the FBI were furious that Hillary Clinton was not
criminally charged for her handling of classified information;
pressured FBI Director James Comey into writing a letter that was
pretty clearly harmful to Clinton about further investigating the
case; and seemed to be improperly communicating with close Trump ally
Rudy Giuliani. And while we are now being treated to anonymous leaks
about how the CIA believes Putin helped Trump, recall that the FBI,
just weeks ago, was shoveling
anonymous claims to the New York Times that
had the opposite goal:

One
can choose to believe whatever anonymous claims from these agencies
with a long history of lying and error one wants to believe, based on
whatever agenda one has. Or one can wait to review the actual
evidence before forming beliefs about what really happened. It should
take little effort to realize that the latter option is the only
rational path.

(4)
Even just within the leaks of the last 24 hours, there are multiple
grounds of confusion, contradictions, and uncertainty.

The
always-observant Marcy Wheeler last
night documented many of those; anyone
interested in this story should read her analysis as soon as
possible. I want to highlight just a few of these vital
contradictions and questions.

To
start with, the timing of these leaks is so striking. Even as
Democrats have spent months issuing one hysterical claim after
the next about Russian interference, the White House, and Obama
specifically, have been very muted about all of this. Perhaps that’s
because he did not want to appear partisan or be inflammatory, but
perhaps it’s because he does not believe there is sufficient proof
to accuse the Russian government; after all, if he really believed
the Russians did even half of what Democrats claim, wouldn’t he (as
some Democrats have argued) be duty-bound to take aggressive action
in retaliation?

It
was announced yesterday afternoon that Obama had ordered
a full review of hacking allegations: a
perfectly sensible step that makes clear that an investigation is
needed, and evidence disclosed, before any definitive conclusions can
be reached. It was right on the heels of that announcement that
this CIA leak emerged: short-cutting the actual, deliberative
investigative process Obama had ordered in order to lead the public
to believe that all the answers were already known and, before the
investigation even starts, that Russia was guilty of all charges.

More
important is what the Post buries in its story: namely, what are the
so-called “minor disagreements among intelligence officials about
the agency’s assessment”? How “minor” are they? And what do
these conclusions really mean if, as the Post’s sources admit, the
CIA is not even able to link the hack to the actual Russian
government, but only to people outside the government (from the Post:
“Those actors, according to the official, were ‘one step’
removed from the Russian government, rather than government
employees”)?

This
is why it’s such a shoddy and unreliable practice to conduct
critical debates through conflicting anonymous leaks. Newspapers like
the Post have the obvious incentive to hype the flashy,
flamboyant claims while downplaying and burying the caveats
and conflicting evidence. None of these questions can be asked, let
alone answered, because the people who are making these claims are
hidden and the evidence is concealed.

(5) Contrary
to the declarations of self-vindication by supremely
smug Democrats,
none of this even relates to, let alone negates, the concerns over
their election-year McCarthyite behavior and tactics.

Contrary
to the blatant straw man many
Democrats are railing against,
nobody ever said it was McCarthyite to want to investigate claims of
Russian hacking. To the contrary, critics of Clinton supporters have
been arguing for exactly that: that these accusations should not be
believed in the absence of meaningful inquiry and evidence, which has
thus far been lacking.

What
critics have said is McCarthyite — and, as one of those
critics, I fully stand by this — is the lowly tactic of accusing
anyone questioning these accusations, or criticizing the Clinton
campaign, of being Kremlin stooges or Putin agents. Back in August,
after Democrats decided to smear Jill Stein as a Putin stooge, here’s
how I defined
the McCarthyite atmosphere that
Democrats have deliberately cultivated this year:

So
that’s the Democratic Party’s approach to the 2016 election.
Those who question, criticize or are perceived to impede
Hillary Clinton’s smooth, entitled path to the White House are
vilified as stooges, sympathizers and/or agents of Russia: Trump,
WikiLeaks, Sanders, The Intercept, Jill Stein. Other than loyal
Clinton supporters, is there anyone left who is not covertly
controlled by or in service to The Ruskies?

Concerns
over Democrats’ McCarthyism never had anything to do with a
desire for an investigation into the source of the DNC and Podesta
hacking; everyone favored such investigations. Indeed, accusations
that Democrats were behaving in a McCarthyite manner were predicated
— and still are — on their disgusting smearing as Kremlin agents
anyone who wanted evidence and proof before believing these
inflammatory accusations about Russia.

To
see the true face of this neo-McCarthyism, watch this amazing
interview from this week with Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, one
of the party’s leading Russia hawks (he’s quoted in the Post
article attacking Obama for not retaliating against Putin). When
Schiff is repeatedly asked by the interviewer, Tucker Carlson,
for evidence to
support his allegation that Putin ordered the hacking of Podesta’s
emails, Schiff provides one.

What
he does instead is accuse Carlson of being a Kremlin stooge and
finally tells him he should put his program on RT. That —
which has become very typical Democratic rhetoric — is the vile
face of neo-McCarthyism that Democrats have adopted this year, and
nothing in this CIA leak remotely vindicates or justifies it:Needless
to say, questions about who hacked the DNC and Podesta email accounts
are serious and important ones. The answers have widespread
implications on many levels. That’s all the more reason these
debates should be based on publicly disclosed evidence, not
competing, unverifiable anonymous leaks from professional liars
inside government agencies, cheered by drooling, lost partisans
anxious to embrace whatever claims make them feel good, all conducted
without the slightest regard for rational faculties or evidentiary
requirements.

The
CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in
the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather
than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system,
according to officials briefed on the matter.

Intelligence
agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian
government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails
from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary
Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those
officials described the individuals as actors known to the
intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost
Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

“It
is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal
here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get
elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence
presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”....

Agency
reportedly believes individuals acting for Moscow hacked Democrat
party emails and gave them to WikiLeaks

US
intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in last
month’s presidential election to boost Donald Trump’s bid for the
White House, according to reports.

A
secret CIA assessment found that Russian operatives covertly
interfered in the election campaign in an attempt to ensure the
Republican candidate’s victory, the Washington Post reported,
citing officials briefed on the matter.

A
separate report in the New York Times said intelligence officials had
a “high confidence” that Russia was involved in hacking related
to the election.

The
claims immediately drew a stinging rebuke from the president-elect’s
transition team, which said in a statement: “These are the same
people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”....

In
this Fox News’ interview, Bolton reiterates that ‘if
Russia hacked the DNC and RNC email servers in order to help Trump
get elected’ (just
typing that out makes one realize how stupid a narrative this really
is) then ‘Russia
should be punished severely.’

BUT…and
it is a big but…Bolton makes it clear that no real evidence points
to a Russian hack.

Bolton
then take things one step further by throwing out the possibility
that this was actually an inside job, false flag.....